


Dark Angel

by Reve_Du_Midi



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reve_Du_Midi/pseuds/Reve_Du_Midi
Summary: I'm not sure how to describe it, maybe it's a story of found and lost and found again, between two people.It's inspired by the JRock, then starting "Visual" scene aesthetics in Japan of the decade starting in the late 1980s, though the story itself happens later, roughly around 2010. Music and musicians of course is part of it.It's is an original story I wrote years and years back, but came across again recently and still liked, so I decided to put it here. Maybe that will also finally get me to work on the long delayed sequel.I left both Relationships and Characters RTFO - read to find out - because putting names in there because doing so would spoil the story in some ways.





	1. Chapter 1

Crap, Ryu though. Crap, crap, crap.

He balled up the sheet of paper he'd been writing on, fired it across the room at a trash can that was already overflowing with others of the same kind.

Fired his pen after it after a second, listening to the brief clattering noise it made when it hit the floor. Wished he had something heavier to throw, something that would loudly crash onto the floor. Wanted to bang his head or fist against the wall. 

He jumped up, restless with frustration, grabbed his old black leather coat, was out of his tiny studio apartment the next moment.

He found himself in the small park he had stared at far too many sleepless nights not much later, striding towards the rail that guarded the sudden cliff drop into the Pacific Ocean. 

Stopped a moment later when the pale light of dawn revealed a human form in one of the iron chairs facing the rail. 

Someone homeless or drunk, he thought first. Briefly even wondered if he had come upon a corpse, until he noticed long legs stretched out, feet resting on the rail. Behaviour unlikely for a dead body, he decided, even if the head was bend back on the rounded upper edge of the chair's back at a rather wide angle, long, raven black hair flowing almost to the ground from it.

Hair that must reach down to her ass, Ryu thought, surprised when a moment later, as he moved a little closer in the brightening light of almost sunrise, he saw the she was a he, a white dress shirt molded to the chest of the person slumped into the chair clearly revealing his gender.

Not slumped, he corrected himself a moment later, but rather elegantly arranged in what he guessed had to be a rather uncomfortably contraption. 

And definitely not homeless, either, Ryu concluded wryly, staying still in the shadow of some trees as he continued to study the motionless form, unless 3.000$ tuxedos and hand made evening shoes, polished to an almost mirror like gloss, were the latest LA homeless' fashion. 

Not that the owner seemed to care, the jacket, Ryu saw as he continued his silent study of the man, was somewhat randomly folded up and placed on the head rest to make it softer, the black evening tie undone, loosely hanging down the sides of the equally undone collar, two more equally undone top buttons allowing a glimpse on what Ryu suspected was a platinum necklace, a unique design at that.

Too bad I'm not a mugger, he thought, the necklace alone, without the designer sunglasses and several rings on the one hand he could see, would probably have paid his living costs for quite a bit. As might have the diamond stud that was revealed when an ocean breeze blew back long strands of dark hair that had partly covered the man's face. 

A face, Ryu saw with some surprise, that was not only, like his own, Japanese, but felt strangely familiar. 

The latter a thought that made him shake his head at himself: not only was the man at least half a decade or so his senior - in his early 30ies, by his looks - but he most definitely also had no acquaintances in the income class the older man's attire suggested.

Said attire making it a bit of a mystery what he was doing there, in the deserted park, that time of day, dressed as he was, a living invitation to robbery.

Or maybe rather grand theft, Ryu thought with a head shake; the man really must be somewhat insane to be out as he was in the place he was. 

Maybe he wasn't there voluntarily after all, it occurred to Ryu, maybe he did need help of some kind. 

Impulsively he decided to check, knowing it might not be the wisest decision to get involved, but unable to stop himself.

A voice - deep, slightly rough, "a whisky voice," as he called it later, when he described the encounter to a friend - stopped him before he came within three paces of the chair.

"I don't know what you have in mind," the suddenly very awake stranger said, eyes snapping open, barely visible to Ryu behind the blue to purple tinted glasses,"but for you I hope it's nothing... unnice." 

"I'm not quite as stupid as this may look," he added, casually moving to reveal that in the hand Ryu hadn't been able to see he held a small but very high caliber pistol.

Stretching with the lazy grace of a cat just as the rising sun hit the chair, he looked Ryu over critically as he rose from the chair in one smooth, elegant flow of movement, putting the gun away in a barely visible holder under his shoulder.

"You haven't been in LA very long, have you?" he asked Ryu. "Anyone who knows this city would have known better to try to approach a stranger as you did. Even one seemingly asleep or unconscious."

He shook out the slightly crumpled jacket, slung it over his shoulder carelessly, with the same spare elegance he had shown before. He took a moment to free his hair from below the fabric, shake it out again, then reached into a pocket to produce a box of long Davidoff cigarillos, lit one with an engraved platinum lighter. 

Blowing out smoke with obvious enjoyment he started to walk towards the exit of the park, though stopped once more when he was level with Ryu, even if looking in the opposite direction.

"Do me a favour," he told Ryu in that brief moment, before walking off, "if you come again here around this time, cough or something. I don't particularly mind being stared at, but I do get a bit nervous - and inclined to act on that - if I think someone tries to sneak up on me. And I'm sure you wouldn't want me to shoot you."


	2. Chapter 2

Ryu did not, in the end, go back to the park. 

What he did instead was to get himself a strong field glass the afternoon of the day he had met the stranger, to check if he would be there the next day.

That one borrowed from a friend - who was more than a little surprised by Ryu's sudden interest in nature - a week later, after the man had shown up in the park every morning just before dawn, always resting in the same chair, the same way, always getting up again after the first rays of the morning sun had hit him, he bought himself the best he could find. 

Second hand, but still expensive, something he knew he shouldn't be wasting money on. 

Yet still did: watching the stranger during his morning park visits from the secret watch post of his window had become an obsession. One that he could explain not even to himself really; one that had become part of the rhythm of his days.

To try and figure out, he rationalized his behaviour, why the face had felt so familiar, when there was no reason that it should be. 

Not that he came any closer to figuring that out, not even after a month and a half of watching, but even then he couldn't stop, noted down small changes from day to day even, like one days a few petals from an unlikely Japanese Higan Cherry tree looking like droplets of blood on the white dress shirt. Another, that actually the man had taken of his sunglasses briefly, which made him wish he'd been there that moment.

Though he suspected he wouldn't have, had he known he had company. Nor did the glasses help in that case, his face was turned to the sea when he did, away from Ryu's window.

Things that if anything only added to his obsession, with needing to know why he was so sure he somehow did know the other. 

He ridiculed the idea even as he could not let go of it, driving him into a frustration almost as strong as the one that had sent him into the park in the first place - one that had not lessened, either - almost ready to resort to serious stalking. 

Not that we had succeeded at that, he wryly thought some days later, when his first attempt at that had turned out not very successful: he had found a coffee shop that it turned out was the others habitual stop after his visit to the park, but the casual look the older man had given him in passing on the street also made it very clear that he had been far from an invisible observer. 

That attempt though also had turned into a small victory, in an unexpected way, when the older man turned around briefly before entering the coffee shop, looking him over as he had done before that day in the park. 

"If you've come for the job interview, you might want to go back and change," he said with a nod at Ryu's jeans and short leather jacket, "Pierre has a black pants, white shirt dress code for his staff. Though if you're quick about it, you should still be the first to get to him."


	3. Chapter 3

Ryu hadn't even know about the job advertisement, but after those words, neither wild horses nor a pack of wolves or an attacking tiger would have stopped him from applying - after he had run home to change into the required attire, that is.

Then spent three nerve wrecking days waiting.

Wondering if he had appeared awkward in the unusual for him clothes. If his own long hair - not quite as long as the strangers, but still flowing halfway down his back - had worked against him. If his silver painted nails had.

If, if, if... He thought of possibilities he would have laughed off at any other time, then, he lunged for the telephone every time it rang, checked messages on his answering service obsessively.

Nearly shaking when he finally recognized the voice of the coffee shops owner as the man called him the third day after the job interview; barely able to voice his acceptance after he understood that the man was offering him the job if he still wanted it.

Almost shaking again the next morning in the coffee shop when, just after it opened, the stranger entered it.

He wondered whether and how to greet him, but then stayed silent when the owner shook his head as the man made his way to the comfortable chair at the end of the almost bar like counter, reaching for one of the newspapers waiting there for him. 

Not looking up from that when Ryu went over to place an ashtray within easy reach, a place the owner had directed him to put it. Not ordering anything either - not saying anything at all, in fact - though that small mystery was cleared up a moment later through an explanation by the owner. 

"Mr Takayama has his own special blend," he told Ryu, already reaching for the airtight urn of that, then handing it over to Ryu while explaining how to make the coffee, from the start of with manually grinding the beans, then brewing the coffee and finally serving it, in a cup that obviously also was the special property of the enigmatic man. Together with a small plate of half a dozen wafer thin dark chocolates, a matching bowl of an equal number of peeled grapefruit slices, again arranging everything precisely has the owner had instructed him.

A process Takayama only acknowledged with a slight nod, not even looking up from his newspaper, proceeding to a second after he was done with the first, to finish with a third, the Japanese Nikkei - Nippon Keisai Shinbun, Japan´s equivalent to the Wall Street Journal, that Ryu was surprised to see there - after having ordered another cup of coffee with a slight lift of one finger.

Finally picked up the sunglasses he had taken off and put down on the counter for his reading and put them on again before he looked up. Putting a folded bill half under the edge of his cup's saucer, he got up, walked out of the shop as silently has he had come, only nodding a wordless greeting to the shops owner, and, like an afterthought, to Ryu.

The owner only let go of Ryu's arm, that he had taken when he had attempted to move over to remove the china after the other man had gotten up, after the man had left, but still kept him from taking care of the china for another moment. 

"Aside from serving," he told Ryu then, "never go anywhere near him unless he calls you. Don't talk to him unless he talks to you first. Don't even say "good morning, Sir," or "please come again." Leave him alone."

"Of course, if you say so," Ryu agreed easily, "but, if I may ask, why? Is he someone famous or dangerous or so?"

The other hesitated a moment.

"He is my best customer," he said then. "more, without him, I wouldn't have this place at all. Aside from that, I only know that he owns some bars and restaurants and clubs, one that he even manages himself." 

"Don't even think about going," he told Ryu with a shake of his head and a slight chuckle, "it's members only, extremely exclusive and extremely expensive and probably not to your liking anyhow."

He shook his head again at Ryu's quizzical look, then nodded at the coffee cup and other things still on the counter.

"I talk too much," he said, "and you have cleaning up to do. After that, go over the regular's index - as often as you need - and make sure you remember all their preferences."


End file.
